Lower Severn Catchment Area and its Floods

The Lower Severn Community Flood Education Network provides a community archive for flood heritage information for the Lower River Severn. The educational resources are available to be accessed, and contributed to, by communities, stakeholders in flood risk management, students and researchers who are interested in changing patterns of flooding and how best to deal with community flood risk.

The site displays digital stories and photographs of flood experiences contributed both by individuals and community partners within Gloucestershire. The site uses Web 2.0 technologies like in Vimeo, Flikr, Voicethread and a blog to encourage communities to add their own resources to the archive whether stories or photos. There is also the opportunity to comment on the resources already posted.

As an educational resource, the archive provides all kinds of insights about how communities in the Severn catchment experience floods – past and present. The stories and images provide an evidence base for exploring:

how people cope with extreme floods now and in the past in urban and rural communities

the issues around how extreme floods are best managed in communities

key learning points during and after floods

and what people remember some time after the flood has passed.

Please note that the resources on this site can be used for educational purposes only, which is the spirit in which they are posted and shared.

A number of community groups and other organisations have advised on the project including Gloucestershire Women’s Institute, Gloucestershire County Council, Gloucester Folk Museum, Environment Agency and Gloucestershire Archives.